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North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper said in the wake of Charlottesville violence that Confederate monuments should be removed from state property. Cooper suggested that some be moved to the Bentonville battleground. Office of the Governor

The Democratic governor wants to repeal a 2015 law that protects monuments and move Confederate statues that sit on state-controlled property.

“Gov. Cooper believes that our Civil War history is important but that it belongs in textbooks and museums and not on a place of allegiance on the Capitol grounds,” Cooper’s spokesman, Ford Porter, said in a statement Thursday. “As the governor has said, conversations about our state’s racial history are never simple or easy. But we must learn from our past and move forward as a state.”

Berger endorsed the law in his commentary.

“Two years ago, the state Senate unanimously passed a bill that tried to reduce the politics in making these decisions,” he wrote. “I believe many current members of the Senate would be hesitant to begin erasing our state and country’s history by replacing that process with a unilateral removal of all monuments with no public discourse.”

Video: A ladder and strong rope were used to swiftly pull a Confederate statue to the ground during an ‘Emergency Durham Protest’ at the old Durham County Courthouse in response to the violent protests Saturday in Charlottesville, on Monday, Aug. Casey Tothctoth@heraldsun.com